A custom production-management system connecting operational activity with project financials.
Completed · Early Limited Use PHP 8.1 | MySQL | Bootstrap 5 | JavaScript · PDF Reporting · AI-Assisted Development
The Challenge
Commercial and specialty print production involves significant coordination between projects, people, schedules, production work, costs and deliverables.
The challenge wasn’t simply a lack of reporting. The underlying operational information was fragmented across different processes, making it difficult to maintain a consistent view of what was happening within a project and what that activity was costing.
Project → Production Work → Employee Time → Labour Cost → Expenses → Revenue → Profitability
The Solution
Commercial Production Hub (CPH) was designed as a centralized production-management system that brings those relationships together.
Projects become the central record for production activity, with time, expenses, financial information, reporting and operational status connected to the project rather than maintained independently.
CPH was designed to accommodate multiple project types across multiple divisions within one system, allowing different production workflows to operate within a common application framework.
Project Management
Projects are the central organizational unit within CPH. Each project contains the information required to manage its production, including project details, associated work, financial information, time, expenses, documentation and status.
The system supports different project types and multiple divisions without requiring separate applications for each workflow.
Why it matters: The project becomes the single operational record connecting the work being performed, the people performing it, the resources consumed and the financial result.
Time Tracking
CPH provides two methods of recording production time: active timers and manual entry. Users can start and stop a timer while working, or enter time manually when a live timer isn’t practical. Time is associated directly with projects and becomes part of the project’s labour-cost calculation.Built-in Time Controls
Each user can have only one active timer at a time, preventing overlapping timers from producing inaccurate records. CPH also monitors unusual timer activity; an unstoppable or excessively long-running timer can generate an alert so it can be reviewed before it becomes an inaccurate project cost.
Project Financials
Financial information is integrated directly into the
project record, including project revenue, labour costs, direct expenses and project profitability.
Revenue − Labour Cost − Expenses = Project Profitability
Expense Management
Expenses are associated directly with each project and becomes a part of the project’s overall cost structure.
Reporting Centre
Information collected through normal production activity becomes available through the CPH reporting centre, providing management visibility without requiring information to be manually assembled from multiple sources.
Project Health
CPH includes a Project Health Score designed to provide an immediate indication of project condition and identify projects that may require attention before problems become apparent at completion.
PDF Reporting
CPH can generate formatted PDF reports for information that needs to be distributed, reviewed or retained outside the application.
User Roles & Permissions
CPH uses a layered permission architecture. The system supports Staff, three levels of Editor access, and Administrators.
- Staff:Â Staff users have access to the functions required to perform production work, including project activity and time tracking.
- Editors:Â Three levels of Editor access provide progressively broader editing and project-management capabilities.
- Restricted Projects:Â Certain projects can require an editor to explicitly agree to the applicable contract before access is granted. Having editor permissions does not automatically mean being authorized to access every project.
- Administrators:Â Administrators have access to financial information, reporting, user administration and system configuration.
Audit & Accountability
CPH maintains an audit history of relevant system activity, providing visibility into changes and additional accountability around shared operational and financial records.
Technical Architecture
CPH is a custom PHP/MySQL web application designed to operate within conventional shared hosting.
- Application: PHP 8.1
- Database: MySQL
- Interface: Bootstrap 5 / HTML / CSS / JavaScript
- Hosting: GoDaddy Shared Hosting / cPanel
- Reporting: PDF generation
- Development: AI-assisted iterative development
User Browser → Web Application → PHP Application Layer → MySQL Database
Development Process
Problem Definition → Workflow Design → Data Model → Application Architecture → Implementation → Testing → Refinement → Deployment
The CPH application became more capable as actual workflows were tested and requirements became clearer, allowing the final system to better reflect the realities of the production environment it is used in, rather than just a theoretical specification.
AI-Assisted Development
- Application architecture
- Database design
- PHP and SQL development
- Debugging
- Refactoring
- Permission design
- UI development
- Troubleshooting
- Testing
- Documentation
- Feature planning
AI became part of an iterative development cycle: Define → Build → Test → Diagnose → Refine → Repeat. This accelerated development while keeping the design and business requirements under human direction.
What CPH Demonstrates
CPH demonstrates the ability to move from Business Problem to Real-World Deployment.
- Business-process analysis
- Workflow design
- Database modelling
- Application architecture
- Financial modelling & reporting
- Permission architecture
- UX design & testing
- Deployment
The primary story is the ability to understand a business problem and build a practical system around it.
Current Status
CPH has reached its initial completed release and is now in early limited real-world use. Future improvements can be driven by actual use and additional requirements rather than speculation.